Small Business & Service

Small Business & Service

We all lament when a local business closes as we are all left more and more reliant on one of the larger impersonal enterprises.

All of us should look at patronising as many small businesses as possible for they are the cornerstone of our economy.

They employ more people than large enterprises as a conglomerate

The service is generally friendly, personal and relevant

They spend their profits in our economy

Profits aren’t spent overseas

They don’t hide behind the veil of a huge enterprise when things go wrong

If a problem does occur generally they try to fix it

What Prompted Me To Blog This Topic?

We are finance brokers providing financial services to small and large businesses alike for the purchase of cars, trucks, excavators, home loans and commercial loans. So why blog? Well three incidences recently pushed my buttons:

I was going on holidays and as usual left things to the last minute. To protect my pool while we were away I decided to give it a dose of chlorine. Sunday afternoon, only the big well known store was open so we went and bought a tub of chlorine from them (usually I get my pool supplies from our pool maintenance bloke – a small family business).

The cheap chlorine was of such a poor quality it stained the pool so badly that the pool had to be drained and pressure cleaned. This wasn’t such a cheap and convenient purchase after all and would not have happened if I had of used my regular small business provider. He would have serviced the pool while I was away and it would have been much much cheaper than my “cheap” purchase and with zero recourse to the large well know organisation.

As an arranger of loans we deal with many banks and lenders.

For example: One loan submitted came back approved with strange approval conditions which were impossible to meet and were nonsensical. We endeavoured to contact the approving officer only to find he was located in India and had gone home. Service is our business so we contacted the head office to get this sorted, which we did do. Had the client tried to do this themselves they could not have done it as:

They would not know the office was overseas

They would not have a second option

They would not know the condition was fixable

We are finance brokers, as such our credit rating is paramount, more so than the average small business because this is our livelihood.

We, like many many businesses, have to deal with large impersonal organisations out of necessity.

Over the past 9 months, every month, we have received notice of impending legal action for non-payment of our monthly account fee. Every month it has been paid before the due date and confirmation received. Every month we call the supplier of this service, every month it takes 30 to 35 minutes speaking with their representative in the Philippines to be advised it is a computer error, don’t worry about it. Easy for them, but we can’t let it slide for if a summons was issued the notation can sit on our credit file for 7 years regardless of it being correct or incorrect. Thirty minutes on the phone is better than lawyers, legal fees, court appearances all to prove their fault. Annoying but true.

Last month it happened again. A call was made to their representative in the Philippines with a request to speak to someone in Australia, we were refused, but after 45 minutes we were eventually put through to the Australian office who put us on to a recording asking what was our issue then the recording hung up.

A small business is defined as a partnership or company with fewer than 50 employees. It cannot and will not survive without competent, caring and service orientated people.

If we do not patronise small business they will disappear and with them the service and caring so many of us need, require and look for.

Keep service, keep small business. Next time you need a tool, fruit, mechanical repairs financial service or anything for that matter think of what it will be like without someone taking ownership of your request – and we all know what that is like, don’t we?